Travel Blog

Well, if snow on May 6th was bad, how about some snow on May 12th?

Now, how would you like to be the folks who were set to have an outdoor wedding here on the 15th?

But, by the next afternoon, it looked like this:

So the wedding didn't get snowed on...it got rained out. Oh well. They still had a good time.

Anyway, I finally, finally got to see my little donkeys. But before we get to them, we had a good day off on Thursday. We said we were going to stay in the park so we didn't spend any more money on the house, but we ended up in Custer and spent a whole bunch of money anyway. First thing, we got gas, and now that diesel is back to well over $3 a gallon, there went a hundred bucks. But I took a picture at the gas pumps to take my mind off it.

Looks like a cute little place, and since my middle name is Ruth, well, what can I say? We were hungry, but we didn't eat at Ruthie's. We had heard of a place called Baker's  Bakery so we thought it would be nice to pay homage to my maiden name and eat there. As soon as you walk in the door, you are greeted by dinner-plate-sized cinnamon rolls! We surely did like that place.

After we ate and spent some more money at the Ace Hardware, we decided to take a drive up to Sylvan Lake because Phil hadn't been up there yet. I had been up there in the company van just the week before, and I thought it was quite lovely. We'll have to go back in the warm weather and go canoeing or something. Here's the lodge there (I didn't take a picture of the lake...next time.)

When we left Sylvan, we swung by Blue Bell because we were on the way to the Wildlife Loop to find my burros. We stopped in the store at Blue Bell and chatted with a nice guy named Dave.

Blue Bell is where we can go horseback riding for FREE! We just have to call on one of our day's off and see if they have room for us on one of their excursions. That should be fun. This is where the chuckwagon cookouts are too. And this is where I send all the cowboy-oriented merchandise from the warehouse.

Then it was on to the Wildlife Loop. We hadn't gone very far at all, and we ran into some bison. I didn't care about them. There weren't even any babies with these ones to take pictures of. Ho hum. But we rounded a corner, and Phil said, "There they are!" But they were way far away in a field, and we didn't have a good place to pull off, but Phil pulled off to the side as best as we could, and said, "They will come."

And they sure did.

And they got some Corn Pops.

And they liked them.

When we ran out of Pops, we left the burros and ran, almost literally, into more bison. We caught this fellow scratching himself on the guardrail.

Look at all that dust he's kicking up (or shaking off himself).

And then it was back to the homestead. But before we got there, we saw this guy high-tailing it as fast as he could possibly run. We're not sure what he was running from, but he was bookin'.

That's about it for the Payne adventures of late. We're working hard, and Phil is proving himself to be indispensible, as per usual. I think it's time to ask for that raise.